Michael A. O'Loughlin

Current Research and Intellectual Interests:

• Relationship between psychoanalysis and social and political theory
• Psychosocial and psychological understanding of the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers
• Genocide, war, collective trauma and historical memory from psychodynamic perspectives
• Teaching to the unconscious
• Intergenerational and collective trauma
• Trauma and Ireland's Great Hunger
• Trauma and indigenous peoples: Consequences of Residential Schooling
• Consequences of trauma for indigenous and other historically marginalized groups
• Social and historical bases of sever psychiatric disorders
• Narratives of persons suffering sever psychic distress
• Therapeutic strategies for persons suffering sever psychic distress
• Issues in child psychotherapy
• Inquiry into the formation of subjectivity, focusing particularly on psychoanalytic understandings of racial formation, and the sociopolitical and intrapsychic causes of racial hatred
• Inquiry into the relationship between ideology, language, culture, and individual subject formation
• Possibilities of schools as caring, reparative communities
• Postcolonial theory
• Bakhtinian theory
• Lacanian theory
• Agamben's theory
• Critical media studies
• Education and social justice
• Preparation of teachers and psychologists for urban communities that are poor and ethnically diverse

My Current Scholarly Interests:

• Asylum and refugee issues: Effects on children and families
• Relationship between psychoanalysis and social and political theory
• Genocide, war, collective trauma and historical memory from psychodynamic perspectives
• Teaching to the unconscious
• Intergenerational and collective trauma
• Trauma and Ireland’s Great Hunger
• Trauma and indigenous peoples: Consequences of Stolen Generations, Residential Schools etc.
• Consequences of trauma for indigenous and other historically marginalized groups
• Social and historical bases of psychiatric disorders
• Life stories of persons designated with psychiatric disorders
• Therapeutic strategies for persons with psychiatric disorders
• Issues in child psychotherapy
• The nature of child subjectivity
• Child rights, and child and family refugee issues
• Inquiry into the formation of subjectivity, focusing particularly on psychoanalytic understandings of racial formation, and the sociopolitical and intrapsychic causes of racial hatred
• Inquiry into the relationship between ideology, language, culture, and individual subject formation
• Possibility of radical subjectivity and risks of totalitarianism
• Possibilities of schools as caring, reparative communities
• Postcolonial theory
• Bakhtinian theory
• Lacanian theory
• Critical media studies
• Education and social justice
• Preparation of teachers and psychologists for urban communities that are poor and ethnically diverse

In my practice I specialize in child and adult therapy.